Developing a unified theory of provider and patient incentives to advance payment and benefit-design reforms

This project will engage behavioral economists and others to help the Health Care Incentives Improvement Institute (HCI3) refine and begin to use a promising incentives theory that attempts to unify both external incentives, such as professional payment schemes or consumer benefits, with intrinsic incentives, such as personal motivations, in order to help those attempting to improve health care. The purpose of such a unified theory is to: (1) help health care payers and purchasers understand areas of care in which health professionals and patients might have a relatively high sensitivity to external incentives, such as payment incentives; (2) quantify the potential improvement that payment and other incentives might have in certain areas of care; (3) guide payers and health professionals to certain interventions that could help maximize the impact of payment and benefit changes on health professionals and patients for certain areas of care; and (4) ultimately help accelerate and focus the implementation of payment- and benefit-reform efforts. The deliverables will include: (1) an issue brief on the unified theory of improvement in health care incentives; (2) a Web-based application of the framework; and (3) an operational model based on this refined theory of health care incentives, which will help guide health professionals and payers as they pursue incentive reforms.